Fascinated by Greece and now importing wine
Lawyer Sandra Steinarsdóttir and her husband, national team member Ögmundur Kristinsson, completely fell in love with the quality of Greek wines when they moved to Greece in 2018. This summer, they started importing wine from Greece and aim to import more products from the country. The wines from Greece are now available in Vínbúðinn’s online store and on greek.com.
Sandra and Ögmundur have been living abroad since 2014 because of Ögmundur’s job, but he is working for the Greek team Olympiacos.
“After we moved to Greece, we started to get to know the quality of Greek friends, but in our opinion, they are the best. We discovered that we have probably never tasted Greek wines before and then started to check which Greek wines were available in Iceland. It then turned out that there were no Greek wines for sale at Vínbúðinn. We got the idea to bring Greek wine to Iceland in order to enable Icelanders to enjoy it too,” says Sandra in an interview with mbl.is.
The couple now live together with their son Skarphéðni Harry and their dog Frosta Glyfada in Athens and know themselves exceptionally well. “Glyfada is an absolute dream place and we love living there. Everything is bustling with life, awesome restaurants, cafes, shops, playgrounds, palm trees and a short walk to the beach,” says Sandra. Before, they lived in Larissa when Ögmundur played with AEL.
“The Greeks have a long history of wine production and wine drinking which is a big part of Greek culture. To begin with, wine in Greece was not of good quality, and it was not until the 1990s that this began to change. Better education, technology, investments in vineyards and wineries and markets were the variables. There are now over 1,200 wineries in Greece and Greek wine is sold all over the world,” says Sandra.
The Assyrtiko and Xinamavro grapes are among the most popular in Greece, and four of their wines come from there. Greek wines are generally considered to be characterized by their freshness, clean aromatic profile and pairing well with food.
They import wines from Kir-Yianni and Domaine Sigalas.
“We had regularly bought wine from these wine producers and when we had the idea of importing Greek wines, I spoke to a wine consultant who gave me information to put me in touch with them. I put myself in touch with the manager of the wine producers and we had a very good conversation. We soon began to work together on this project, to bring quality Greek wine to Iceland,” says Sandra.
The family is enjoying themselves in Greece and Sandra says one of the main advantages is that the weather is very good there and almost always sunny. “There is also a special feeling here that is nice to experience, very relaxed, but that is especially characteristic of the Greek mentality, they are not too stressed about things. Then there is the food, the beaches, the shops, the playgrounds and so on, there is plenty available in this beautiful country,” says Sandra.
She says that they are immediately thinking about bringing more products home to Iceland. “One of the best things about living in Greece is the wide variety of quality products. There are quite a lot of products that we are interested in exporting to Iceland.”